KARACHI, Sept 2: The government on Sunday sought to distance itself from the collapse of a bridge — part of the recently inaugurated Northern Bypass — and heaped the blame on a private engineering firm responsible for the portion of the structure that buckled on Saturday afternoon and left nine people dead.
Speaking at a press conference, the chairman of the National Disaster Management Authority, Lt-Gen (retd) Farooq Ahmad Khan, said a major structural flaw was detected when the span of the bridge was installed and one of the girders went up by around 7.8 millimetres in March 2006.
He said the private engineering firm undertaking the construction of the portion of the bridge turned to a Greek consultancy firm which gave the structure a clean bill of health in June 2006 following some structural alterations. In Feb 2007, the bridge was opened to vehicular traffic on a trial basis.
But Mr Khan refused to say who was responsible for the engineering disaster and what action would be taken against them. He even expressed ignorance about Communications Minister Shamim Siddiqui’s comments in which he had told the media that the army-run National Logistics Cell – which had built the bridge for the National Highway Authority – had been blacklisted.
The communications ministry suspended at least four officials of the NHA on Saturday night. Documents pertaining to the bridge construction were also sealed.
But the most the NDMA chairman could say was that the names of a couple of people who could be responsible for the collapse of the bridge had been placed on the Exit Control List. He told a newsman he could not name the names.
‘Beyond recognition’
The authorities supervised a slow-moving rescue operation and succeeded in retrieving three more bodies from the mangled mass of concrete 20 hours after the occurrence of the accident.
Edhi sources told Dawn that the bodies had been mutilated beyond recognition. They added that mutilated body parts were responsible for some confusion about the death toll.
Fire brigade officials, drawing on their meagre resources, took part in the operation in the absence of trained rescue workers.
The body of 32-year-old Rizwan Raza, who was killed in his car (AMK-417), was retrieved after his legs were amputated.
“We shifted Rizwan’s body to Khurasan for funeral arrangements,” chief volunteer Rizwan Edhi said.
Referring to another body, he said the victim was identified as Moosa, a resident of Baldia Town.
“His face was badly mutilated. We reconstructed his faced by using cotton which led to his identification.”
The third body recovered from the heavy concrete structure was identified as Tanveer.
“The body was also badly mutilated,” Mr Edhi said, adding that the body was sent to the Civil Hospital for legal formalities.
Crowd control
Crowds of curious onlookers descended upon the site of the accident on Sunday. Rangers personnel controlling the crowds did not do their job in a tactful manner and scuffled with officials of the city government on late Saturday night.
Many onlookers disregarded the city government’s warning about getting too close to the perilously tilted bridge. Some of them could not help feeling upset about the poor quality of the masonry and remarked that “the government can only build bridges for bicycles”.
Unable to remove the wreckage, the authorities decided to shift the contents of a trailer still stuck in the debris of the collapsed bridge.
The NDMA chairman told newsmen on Sunday that the NLC would present a detailed plan on Monday for the removal of the dangerous portion of the bridge. He refused to put a timeline on the process.
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